Ian and Lola

Two peas in a pod! We unfortunately lost one of our peas this month. Lola has gone on to be with the Lord, but her life was a life of hard work, giving, warmth and kindness. She was 98 and persevered in both mind and spirit to the end. May we all live lives as full as Lola's! (See Grandma Mickey's Blog for another perspective of Lola)

The other pea, has a good running start in the same race that Lola ran. He made me think of this today. I am so very proud of him! Let me explain why.

Ian struggles with Dyslexia. I've been working with him on his reading by training him to focus as he reads. One of his biggest struggles is his lack of focus on filler words and site words. He tends to look over them, add them or assume them. While reading last night, he would read the word "a" and "he" in place of the word "the". He got into habits like this a few years ago, because before we realized he had Dyslexia, he would read two or three words in a sentence and assume the rest. He was pretty good at this by the way! Even the Doctor that tested Ian for Dyslexia was impressed with how he could pull the content of a sentence out with so few words!

This is getting long, so I'm going to cut to the point. I gave Ian a writing assignment for the next day. I wanted him to write "I will not read "the" as "a" or "a" as "the", and the same with "he" as a focus exercise. He knew this would take some extra time to do, and that it might interfere with the rest of his school day. So he took it upon himself to set his alarm clock a half hour early so he could get the assignment done before he started school!

He may have trouble reading, but his work ethic is spot on! (I can thank his mom for that). Ian shows many of the traits that Lola had, including hard work. We do our best to teach him, but he also has a lot to teach us, and he a good teacher. Well done son!!